Children’s Social Care services
Referral and Assessment service (R&A)
This is a front line social work service which undertakes assessments/provides services to Children In Need and works with children who are at risk of serious harm and in need of protection. The referral and assessment service consists of: 5 social work teams who operate a Child Protection and Child In Need duty service from Laurence house; the Out of Hours Social work Team; a small Hospital duty social work presence at UHL; services for Privately Fostered children; services for children who are missing from home; Young Carers’ and for families who have been assessed as needing support due to having no recourse to public funds. There is also a social worker who deals with Hidden Harm (substance misuse) and a social worker taking the lead on Domestic Violence and contributing to the MARAC.
Referral and Assessment includes a number of initiatives aimed at protecting the most vulnerable children. This includes children at risk from Substance Misuse by parents or themselves, children who are caring for a parent at home and children who go missing from home. These children who are often ‘on the edge’ of mainstream services are afforded particular attention within Referral and Assessment in Lewisham. The out of hours Emergency Duty Team was identified by Ofsted as providing a responsive service. “The emergency duty team (EDT) for adults and children is staffed by experienced and appropriately qualified social workers and maintains good links with the referral and assessment teams.”
The MASH (Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub) sits within Referral and Assessment. This is a multi-agency team (including Police, Early Intervention, Health, Attendance and Welfare as well as Children’s Social Care Social Work staff) with the aim to sharing information and identifying the right services for families.
The Service has now moved to being area linked develop closer links to the partners in the community in order to help build their capacity to work with families that are not reaching the threshold for Children’s Social Care with the support of the Early Intervention Service when necessary (see below)
Family Social Work service (FSW)
Provides assessment and support to children subject to a Child Protection Plan, children in care proceedings, and children in high levels of need. The service aims to work with Children in Need and their families and other agencies where there is a high level of need and the provision of a social work service is essential to enable the children to attain or maintain a reasonable level of development. This will include safeguarding services and work with families who are the subject of care proceedings. The service works with Professor David Shemmings in order to improve workers’ skills in identifying disorganised attachment in children. Research has found that 85%+ children with disorganised attachment patterns have suffered maltreatment. Therefore the accurate recognition of disorganised attachment patterns has the potential to enormously increase the effectiveness of CSC in identifying those children who have suffered harm, so that we can focus resources appropriately on supporting these families and protecting these children. Conversely another benefit of the approach is that through the accurate identification with secure attachment styles the Council can be more confident that these children have been well cared for. This approach has proved very useful as a safeguarding tool and is popular with families.
There are seven social work teams, all primarily based on the first floor of Laurence House in Catford. Two school based social workers are managed within the service. The Meliot Road Family Centre is also managed by the service.
Adoption, Looked After Children (LAC) and Leaving Care services
Provides case management for looked after children whose care plan is that they will not be returning to the care of their original family, although this is always kept under review.
Leaving Care Service – provides case management for the service for children who have been in public care and support their transition to adulthood from the age of 16 and in some circumstances up to the age of 25.
Adoption – approves adopters and matches children where a decision has been made by the Adoption and Permanence Panel that adoption is in their best interest.
Adoption, Looked After Children and Leaving Care services are managed by one service manager. The purpose of the service is to ensure that each child has a permanency plan that provides stability and continuity of relationships. The Leaving Care Service lead on the provision of careers advice and work traineeships for care leavers. This service has the lead responsibility for Corporate Parenting and forming a Children in Care Council.
During the early part of 2015 the distinction between the looked after children Teams and the Leaving Care Teams will be changed. In future there will only be looked after teams who will hold the cases throughout the young person’s childhood and their transition to adulthood. Young people have told us that they do not like the change of worker at around the age of 16 and this is in part a response to this.
Children with Complex Needs service (CWCN)
This service no longer sits in Children’s Social Care but has close links due to the fact that there are two social work teams in the service that carry out the full range of statutory Children’s social worker. A dotted line of management accountability exists between the Service Manager of the service and the Director of Children’s Social on the safeguarding and Looked After Children work.
The past couple of years have seen the development of the Children with Complex Needs Service through the amalgamation of the Children in Need Service, Special Educational Needs, Sensory Teaching and Educational Transition Teams.
The Service now consists of the Children with Disabilities Social Work Team, Special Educational Needs Team, Multi Agency Pathway Planning Team (MAPP), Sensory Teachers, Occupational Therapy, Portage and Transition.
The aim of the service is to deliver integrated services to Children with Disabilities and Special Educational Needs through joint multi agency assessment processes.
Business Management, Fostering, Placements and Procurement
This service comprises three different teams:
1. Business Management
Business Process Team - develops, maintains and administers the range of business processes essential for the efficient operation of Children’s Social Care Division - create and maintain providers in ICS, ContrOCC, Supervised Contact, Out of LA Children’s Regulation, Child Trust Fund, Statutory checks and providing administration for the Lewisham fostering panel and for the Preferred Provider Framework.
Finance Process Team - financial planning, processing payments and dealing with range of invoices. Support to budget holders in the effective management of budgets and in compliance with financial regulations and procedures.
2. Fostering
Responsible for Support and development of Lewisham Foster Carers, Long term family finding placements, Viability Assessments-Family & Friends and Special Guardianship, undertaken in line with Fostering Regulations and National Minimum Standards plus CWDC Standards.
3. Placements & Procurement
Responsible for dealing with placement referrals to Lewisham foster carers and the Independent Sector. This includes conducting placement searches and matching; entering all placement details in ICS including costs. The team also assists with contract monitoring and on site quality assurance for Preferred Providers.
Quality Assurance (QA)
Provides the quality assurance function for the Division. It manages the Child Protection processes and independent reviewing of LAC, as well as the training, complaints and access to records functions. It is responsible for quality assuring social work practice in the division. The QA service is responsible for developing and reporting on the audit systems in Children’s Social Care.
Early Intervention Service
The Early Intervention Services became part of Children’s Social Care in 2014 in order to improve outcomes for children by learning the lessons from the quality of work in CSC and also to aid the “step-up” and “step-down” of cases.
The aim of the Early Intervention Service is to deliver and embed an early intervention approach across the borough.This is achieved through universal and targeted services working together to support children, young people and their families so that needs are identified and addressed early to reduce and prevent escalation of needs.
The service seeks to achieve these aims through three core strands, including:
Children’s Centres (CC)
We commission 17Children’s Centresfocused on supporting families with a whole-family approach up to the age of 19. CC Services are delivered by the voluntary sector and schools across the borough.
Children’s Centres do not have a fixed threshold for work but aim to deliver support to those families who, with their help, can reduce their needs and reliance on targeted and specialist services.
Children’s Centres are expected to secure improvements against the following overarching outcomes for children and young people in Lewisham:
· Improved school readiness
· To prevent the escalation of need
· Improve parenting and attachment
Targeted Family Support (TFS)
Our commissioned service focuses on medium to long term support for families and children 0-19, delivered in homes, schools and community settings.TFS is a borough wide service delivered by the Social Work Company.
Targeted Family Support is commissioned to secure improvements against the following overarching outcomes for children and young people in Lewisham:
· Improved child and family resilience
· Improved school participation and engagement
· Prevention of escalation
Core Team
Focused on building the capacity of practitioners operating within the borough, particularly around outcomes – quality and child focused plans, and the Common Assessment (CAF) process.
LAC, Child Protection and Contact Referral
Oct 14 / Nov 14 / Dec 14 / Jan 15The number of LAC / 505 / 507 / 498 / 502
The number of children subject to a CP plan / 329 / 344 / 362 / 377
The number of referrals to CSC / 271 / 295 / 218 / 268
The number of contacts to CSC / 2,097 / 2,100 / 1,856 / 1,966